Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Neurobiol Dis. 2018 Sep 13;126:85–104. doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2018.09.011

Table 5: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

In this table, promising pre-clinical studies were selected in PubMed from 2012–2017 which investigated stem cell therapy for ALS. Moreover, the clinical trials presented were selected due to 1) their recency and 2) their availability of published results. In summary, these milestone studies show that stem cell transplant in mouse models of ALS resulted in increased lifespan, improvement in motor neuron survival, and some motor function improvement. In humans with ALS, stem cells implants were shown to be safe, improved lifespan, and reduced disease progression.

Author Model Cell type Cell Quantity Outcome
Nizzardo et al., 2016 SOD1 G93A mice iPSC-derived NSC 1×106 cells Significant increase in life span.
Zhong et al., 2017 SOD1 G93A mice NSC 2.5×105 cells Significant increase in life span, great motor neuron survival
Srivastava et al., 2014 SOD1 G93A mice NSC Two injections of 1×105 cells Transient improvement in motor function, total transplant cell death by 120 days.
ALS patients, n=63 Autologous BM-MNC Not Specified Positive safety outcomes at 6 months
Oh et al., 2015 ALS patients, n=8 Autologous BMSC Two injections of 1×106/kg cells Positive safety outcomes at 12 months
Mazzini et al., 2015 ALS patients, n=6 hNSC 7.5×105 or 1.5 × 106 cells Cessation of disease progression up to 18 months
Martinez et al., 2016 ALS patients, n=39 PBMNC Not Specified Increase in lifespan and improved Function Rating Scale scores.

iPSC – induced pluripotent stem cell; NSC – neural stem cell; BM-MNC – bone marrow mononuclear cell; BMSC – bone marrow stem cell; hNSC – human neural stem cel; PBMNC – peripheral blood mononuclear cell